configuration management Questions

By Paul McElhone - February 16, 20152 Answers

We are about to migrate from ClearCase (Both Base and UCM) to GIT. Are there any papers or scripts out there that can help?

how to configure users to only see their projects they are assigned. When I assign users I want them to only be able to view their assigned projects. I know the users can filter their projects within the workbench, but I want it done in the Administrator.

Ideally, I'd like to take a unix shell programming course that is offered in the classroom but I would consider an online course as well.  I have ten years of release engineering experience but I was laid off five years ago and I want to work in unix/linux release engineering again or in even switch to system administration.TIA,

Linda Dawson, Lexington, MA

There are a lot of COTS products nowadays that can be customised through configuration and scripting which can significantly change the functionality, so are these still COTS or are they MOTS (Modified-of-the-shelf) or are they something else?

My specific question is about ServiceNow where you can modify the CMDB structure, change and add workflows; create scripts and even change the layout of screens etc. All of this is done through ServiceNow itself and you do not need to develop any 'external' code. Remedy is another tool where this happens.

So do these changes mean that it has been "modified"; is it just a configuration of a COTS, or is it something else?

Thanks

Gary.

We have a code review tool Atlassian Fisheye+Crucible already implemented, but we are using this with Perforce as our version control tool. Since Perforce has another code review tool "SWARM" we'd like to evaluate this tool. But need to know the benefits of using this tool over Crucible with fisheye.

SOme of the benefits I know is:

- efficient Pre-Commit code reviews
- No extra database to administrator
- Performance - Swarm executes transactions much faster than Crucible because Swarm is so tightly integrated with Perforce
- Ability to commit code from SWARm UI

I need to know from a core technical perspective if there is any other benefits.

I'm have promarily used Subversion in the past, and the structure we used was:

/branches    - Self evident name for branch management

   /int          - Integration branches

      /projectA_effort_q4_2014 - Integration branch for release on q4 of 2014

   /usr         - Individual engineers branches

      /fred    - Fred's set of branches

         /some_bug - Fred's branched from somewhere to fix some bug

      /sally    - Sally's set of branches

         /some_feature - Sally's branched from somewhere to add some feature

/tags          - Self evident name for tagging

   /projectA_v1.0 - Tag of projectA at version 1.0

/trunk         - Trunk for various projects

   /projectA  - ProjectA

   /projectB  - ProjectB

/vendor      - Repo path for storing pristine drops of 3rd party code used in various projects

   /acme     - Vendor name of a 3rd party source of code

      /superLib - Acme provides us the superLib

         /current - Latest drop of superLib

         /v1.0_drop - Tagged drop of superLib

         /v1.1_drop - Tagged drop of superLib

 

The machanics of this is to allow for segregated development with maximum traceablity. For example any propriatary changes specific to a project needed within superLib would happen within that project, and only the pristine changes from the vendor would be within the /vendor area, then merged into the project to minimise merge errors.  Users brnach off the integration branches to their own staging areas in usr to integrate new functionality of fix issues and merge them back into the integration branches once proven.  The CM, PM, EM, and PVM would be responcible for merging the integration branch to the trunk project and tagging the trunk project versions.

 

Our current system is TFS based, and is really porrly managed - it was a historical conversion from ClearCase to TFS and there is no clear deliniation as described above.  In fact, it's more like a shot gun of tags and branches, without a really good organzation of where the root of changes should reside, and there's multiple code forks even though 90% of the code is shared.
I was looking to see if it makes sence to refactor the release structure into something like the above, but I'm not sure if it makes sense for TFS and the documentation I can find on TFS doesn't really describe best practices or typical work flows, and the rest of the users here are actually more familier with ClearCase as TFS was a corporate edict of standardization that was pushed onto them.
If you are familier with a better flow or best practice for TFS, please share as our current structure is unmaintainable and unscallable for validation and test purposes.

Thanks much,

-J

A new project we got will force us to add a few more testers for the duration of the project (estimated around 8 months). We will probably outsource this extra testing alongside us. My question really has to do with any advice or tool anyone of you uses or knows of that will be a smart way to manage this effort?

I mean models or domain specific languages to represent complex scm process (version control, identification, build management etc.). Maybe exist some approach allows to represent bridge from abstract process to choise of real tools and implementation.

For exapmle, in software development MDA approach exist, where are 3 kinds of models with different level of abstraction. Are some analogs exists for software configuration management?

How have others solved the resourcing justification for Build / Release engineers? Based on number of supported developers? number of tools? number of deployments? are there base line ratios or other industry standards based on specific products or supported platforms?

I have no clue on bitbucket but read it supports Git. Trying to understand how do we choose which VCS should a company use if code is not public & team size is 100+developers.

Bitbucket or Git on linux based system?Dont wish to explore the paid version to start with.

Any thoughts please share.

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